Behold the powers of my mind and fingers, cause I shall strike upon thee!

Thursday, January 26, 2006

The time I got arrested

Finally my poll on which story you want to hear is over. It was a close call, but as you can see bellow 10 of you (52%) want to read the story of when I got arrested. 8 wanted to read the truth about little sister (thank you miss D, hope you enjoy Leeds). 1 wanted to hear the story about stupid people, which I would have recommended you to vote on.

Totally I got 19 votes. That means that 12 people have voted, since 8 of these vote was from one person... Thank you all.

So here, from me to all of you, the story of when I got arrested (to miss M: could you scan and mail me the pics for this one?)...

In the summer 2003 me and my ex went on an interrail (that would be a railtrip trough Europe for you ignorant people). On our trip we went through Barcelona. On the main street there was a lot of street performers and since I had brought my juggling equipment (no its not fun to drag a unicycle trough Europe) I thought it would be a great idea to put up a show here. With the money I would earn I was planning to buy us dinner. We did have enough money allready, but since I had taken the stuff with me it would be nice also to use it. On my way I had both juggled in Amsterdam and Copenhagen with great success and had lived well on what I earned there.

So we went out in the street and I found a good spot where I could put on my show, and what a great show it was! After 5 minutes I had a huge audience, both sitting and standing, some of them was even lying down because they were laughing so hard. They really enjoyed my show. In the end of my show I normaly use some torches as a finale. I mainly make a lot of jokes with them and then I juggle them for like 3 seconds, so I was planning to do in this show. As I take out the torches and prepare to put flammable fluid on them a guy from the audience who is standing beside me, dressed in pants and a t-shirt, bends forward and mumbles something. I look up at him and says "What". "No torches" he says. The next thing he do is to pull out a wallet and flips it open for like 0.00001 millisecond before he closes it again, just like the police in a bad American action movie.

The next thing which happends is maybe the main reason why it all went wrong. I put down my torches, turn around to face my audience, points at the guy and say, in my best theatrical voice, "AAAAAAND WE GOT A VOLUNTEER!". The guys face turn really angry and he asks to see my ID. As I left all my stuff in the hostel I had nothing (hey, somebody had their hand deep into my bag the day before so I left it all to be sure). He then demand me to come with him. At this moment I had no idea if he is a real cop, or if he had found his badge in a box ofcorn flakes and just wanted to take me away to rob me. And if he was a police I had even less of an urge to follow him as Spanish police are quite famous for their ability to give people the desire for a sudden death. They probably still enjoy the memory of the good old days, when Franco ruled the country.

At this point my audience understands that something is wrong and comes up to talk to the guy. It turns out that he is a real policeman and he is quite serious on the point that he want me to come with him to the station. And then something happens which is quite cool, but in the end, not much help for me. My audience turns mental on the policeman and shouts at him that it's a madness of him to take me in. As they said, or rather cried, I had just made people laugh meanwhile the police does nothing on the robbery or even murder of people which happens all to often in Barcelona. In the caos I tell my ex to run down to the hostel to get my passport.

But the policeman still wants me to come with him and in the end, even though I tell him my ex will bring my passport in a minute, there are 7 uniformed policemen pushing people away while crying "Razzia, razzia!" meanwhile 3 policemen in civil, all huge as gorillas, are taking me down to the station. As we come closer to the station one of them takes a good grip on me and says "Policia, autoridad. Puto!".

At this point I am more scared than ever in my whole life and sure that he will push my face into the policestation, without opening the door. Well inside they put me down in a chair, and one of them says "Un otro para Paco" (Another one for Paco). I'm sitting there, trembling, wondering who Paco is and imagine him as a huge fat guy sitting in the basement, ready to beat the crap out of young jugglers. The fact that two guys at that moment is escorted down the hall wearing nothing but their boxers did not help much.

After the policemen have discussed for a while one comes up to me and ask where my passport is. I tell him that is was in my Hostel and that my girlfriend went to get it. "Where is your girlfriend now?" is his next question, and I explain to him that she is probably looking for me. He then goes back to his pals and after a short conversation he comes back to me and says "Let's go look for your girlfriend."

What a marvelous idea! To go out in Barcelona and look for my girlfriend among 2 million people! But as I didn't want to stay there I went out with him and another gorilla and went up and down the street. As we, of course, could not find her, we went to the hostel. Here the guy performed the same trick with his badge once more, but the lady behind the desk told him firmly to wait as she still had customers. Her husband on the other hand got pale in his face and jumped up to get the key to my room. My ex had been there, but had left in quite a hurry it showed out, and my passport was of course no longer there. Meanwhile the lady explained this, she was looking at me while she twinkled her eye, it did not calm me down though, but a nice gesture.

We then went back to the station and there they made me sign a form where it said, according to them, that I came with them to the station to ID myself. In Spanish I could read that it said "Disturbance of public peace" (they did not know that I speak Spanish), but I was not keen on arguing. And as such they let me go.

Meanwhile all this happened my ex had looked for me all over Barcelona and on every policestation. But as the police she saw had no uniform, nobody could tell her which station I was in. It turned out that she went to the correct one, but the guy in the door was obviously not keen on letting her in, maybe because he though we both would get beaten then. In the end she found two policemen outside of the hostel. They got quite a surprise when a foreign girl came up to them and started to cry hysterically. As they could not understand english they went up with her to the hostel. I was standing inside and my heart jumped up really high when I saw two policemen came in. I was ready to throw myself out of the window at that point.

As such it all went well in the end. I had a bruise on my back from the firm grip the policeman gave me, and we both had pretty messed up nerves. Some smart guy had taken my hat while I argued with the police and collected money for me. I got 7 euro. People are so cheap sometimes, it was a good show and worth a lot more especially since the police dragged me away. We gave flowers to the hostel lady for being cool and I promised my ex not to juggle anymore on the rest of the trip.